Under direction from the Board to formulate listserv guidelines, Leslie Ellen Shear, Dawn Gray, and I put our heads together to come up with a result we are happy with. You can find it here. Please feel free to send your feedback to your favorite Board member or to Leslie, Dawn, or me. You can also post your feedback here as a comment.
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The National Law Journal reports that our courthouses may soon cut hours of operation, and that there’s no money to fund the much-needed 50 new judgeships.
NLJ quotes William Vickrey, Administrative Director of the Courts, as commenting, “”Courts may be open fewer hours. The irony is that in economic downturns the courts get more child support disputes, foster care filings, and landlord tenant problems.” So at the same time that we will be building 15 new courthouses in California, there appears to be little prospect of staffing them. California’s family law courts are already faced with huge caseloads of urgent, complex, and vitally important cases. AFCC (California Chapter) and ACFLS have already adopted resolutions describing the failure to adequately fund family courts as a public health crisis. This means that our client-counseling, negotiation, settlement and ADR skills are going to be more important than ever. Clients are not going to be able to afford the delays in getting their matters heard, and they aren’t going to want to pay us for endless trips to the courthouse where we spend most of the day waiting. We simply have to get better at narrowing the number of cases and issues that need judicial attention, and treating face time with judges as a precious commodity. At the same time, I’m noticing a flood of attorneys laid off from large firms (Latham Watkins laid off 190 associates this week), or other practice areas deciding to take on family law cases. Such lawyers generally underestimate the complexity of family law cases, and their “trial and error” representation is apt to further crowd our already over-taxed family law bench. The budget news makes the job of the Elkins Task Force even more daunting. Please share your ideas for family court reform here on the blog as ACFLS’s Elkins committee formulates recommendations to the Task Force. This week brought two interesting pieces of news. First, when the California Legislature passed the budget, they also passed a bill authorizing Los Angeles County to offer its judges the benefit plan that had been found to violate state law. Since this program represents about $46,000 per year per judge, it will be a significant incentive to attract and keep good judges. After the recent Court of Appeal decisions, L.A.’s judges earned less money than our commissioners. Second, the plan to transfer California’s courthouses from the counties to the State was approved, together with bonds for a major program of courthouse construction. The bonds are funded by filing fees. California is now on the way to building 21st Century courthouses. So, what’s your vision for a 21st Century family court? Watch this spot for some of my thoughts, and please use the “comment” feature to post your ideas.
My current absolute favorite, in the why-didn’t-I-do-this-years-ago category, are my multiple monitors. Instead of the usual one computer/one monitor, I have a three-panel display in front of me. I usually keep my email client (Microsoft Outlook) open in one monitor, whatever I am working on in another and my internet browser open in the third, usually with a research program on one tab. I can easily cut and paste from Westlaw or other document into whatever document I am working on without having to close and re-open windows in a single monitor. It is an incredible time saver. It also makes me feel geekily cool, like I am in the Control Center of Cheyenne Mountain or something. Hardware-wise, I have three Dell 22″ flat panel monitors (not widescreen), models 220FP. Each comes with four additional USB ports so I have plenty available for other peripherals like backup drives and my ScanSnap scanner (which will be the subject of a later blog, I’m sure). I have a dual-monitor video card in my Dell Desktop computer, so I use a Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital Edition splitter than connects all three monitors to the digital monitor input on the video card. The software that came with it stretches my Windows desktop across the three monitors and allows me to customize the settings for how the windows appear on the displays. Not only am I much more productive with the new setup, but I don’t miss an urgent email — or a Facebook post. Now when I am working on my laptop I miss the other two monitors. If you still have a single monitor on your office computer, consider at least adding a second one and see if it doesn’t open up your workspace! As the 2009 President of the Association of Certified Family Law Specialists of California, I am pleased to welcome you to our new blog. The Board of Directors and I have made a commitment to improve communication with our members this year. We want to assure members that we take seriously our duty to support and assist all who choose to make a commitment to the best practices of family law in California. We also are making a new effort to facilitate communication between this organization and its members. We invite your comments and suggestions. In future posts, I will report to the members on both the actions we are taking and the plans for future actions we are making. We are in touch, you be in touch! Please share your concerns, and all your reasoning as well as any suggested remedies, on how to improve our Family Law system for all litigants. Visualize a blank slate and that you are the prime architect of the “state of the art” system for the ages: What is needed? YOU CAN THINK “OUTSIDE” THE BOX! It is a kick to initiate ACFLS’ new Family Law Blog. I’ll be blogging regularly on custody, parentage, jurisdiction and family court reform issues. We’re hoping other members will decide to contribute regular blogs reporting on their areas of practice and interests. The ACFLS blog is a great place for extended discussions of issues that may start on the list serv — such as our recent conversations about the Proposition Eight cases. By the way, you can read all of the court orders and briefs in the Prop 8 cases (including more than 60 amici briefs) at http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/courts/supreme/highprofile/prop8.htm. The March 5, 2009 oral argument will be broadcast on the California Channel, and webcast (and archived for later viewing) at http://www.calchannel.com/. |
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As a one-person law office, I could not do what I do without law office technology. I am also addicted to gadgets. Since I get so many questions about the hardware and other resources I use, I thought I would share some of my favorites and gripes in an occasional blog post.